


Winter Spirit

by PrettyArbitrary



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Fae Gabriel, Happy Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-18 10:10:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13097883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrettyArbitrary/pseuds/PrettyArbitrary
Summary: When the Winter Queen is angry, she sends the bad cold.It comes early, less than a month after they sent the tithe, and brings the snows with it.  Up north after their last soldiering job, Jack and Gabriel huddle together under blankets in their garret room and listen to the trees pop like gunshots as their sap freezes inside them.





	Winter Spirit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Joiedevivre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joiedevivre/gifts).



> Thanks go out to oricalcon for betaing this for me and also for handling my freakouts while writing it. Thanks also to foldingcranes for hosting the secret santa and enabling so much amazing fic and so many happy people! <3

When the Winter Queen is angry, she sends the bad cold.

It isn't bad in the sense of being extreme, although it is. It's bad in the sense of being evil. Those who get caught in it freeze right down to their hearts and become the Winter Queen’s creatures.

It comes so early, less than a month after they sent the tithe at the harvest festival, and brings the snows with it. Up north after their last job as caravan guards, Jack and Gabriel are stranded before they have a chance to head south to their preferred wintering grounds. They huddle together under blankets in their garret room when the temperature plummets, trying to stay as warm as they can while the frost spreads across the windows like groping fingers. Outside, the trees pop like gunshots as their sap freezes inside them. 

Professional soldiering doesn't pay well in the winter, here. The attic room they’ve rented has no fireplace, so the two of them spend a lot of time at the pub where there’s heat, not to mention entertainment, and gossip.

“The cold just took the Widow Gunnerson’s youngest,” the bartender says as she pours them each a pint. “Everyone’s wondering how long she’ll last. She lost her husband just this year, you know, while he was walking down the grain.”

Jack winces. That’s an ugly way to go. 

“Mrs. Gunnerson is a good woman,” Gabriel says somberly as he accepts his mug. They don’t live in this city, but they stay often enough to know some of the community’s leading lights. “Is there anything we can do?”

The bartender shakes her head. “Don’t reckon it’ll be that long before she goes too.”

The speculation on why the Winter Queen is so angry is rampant, and endless. No one knows what could have caused it, so no one knows how to fix it. Jack and Gabriel make an effort to be useful and well-liked. They have a lot of time to kill, but it’s also a form of protection. In times like this, when people are looking for places to put their blame, being an outsider isn’t the safest thing. It helps that they’re a couple. Married soldiers are a lot less objectionable than troublemaking bachelor ones.

But as it turns out, that’s not where the danger comes from. One morning, Jack wakes up to find Gabriel shivering and unable to stop.

Against Gabriel’s protests, Jack begins to spend money they can’t afford for extra blankets and hot baths, and starts bribing pub patrons with rounds of beer to give Gabriel the seat closest to the hearth. It doesn’t slow the cold’s progress; the shivering gets worse. A blue tinge begins to develop under Gabriel’s fingernails and he grows hollow-faced with exhaustion from never being able to get warm.

It doesn’t go overlooked. They both notice the quiet, solemn looks of pity in Jack’s direction, like he’s a man waiting to be widowed. And people they’d begun to think of as friends start to distance themselves. They’re both engaging, charismatic men, and their careers have given them plenty of stories to entertain with on long, boring winter evenings. They’d gotten used to having company at their table, sometimes gathering an entire circle of people to listen to tales of battles and travel. But now people pass them by, offering polite but aloof nods. 

“They act like it’s inevitable,” Jack growls in an undertone. “They act like you’re going to drag them away like a hungry wolf or something.”

Gabriel clasps a chilly hand around Jack’s wrist and pins it to the table to keep him from getting up. “They’re scared, Jack. Scared and helpless. All they can do is watch, and they can’t help imagining it being someone they love.”

Jack snarls into his beer. He’s not feeling charitable, and he learned a long time ago that angry is better than afraid. Gabriel pats his arm and leans against him when Jack wraps an arm around his shoulders.

One morning about a week later, Jack wakes to find Gabriel’s side of the bed empty and cold, as if he hasn’t lain there for hours. He rolls over to find Gabriel sitting by the little window, a blanket draped loosely around his shoulders even though the room isn’t that much warmer than the air outside. Jack lies there for a bit, watching him in dreamy confusion, before he figures out what’s different: Gabriel isn’t shivering.

Jack tosses back the covers and gets up, his breath catching in his throat, to go stand by him. Gabriel heaves a heavy sigh, then turns from the window to look at him. His breath isn’t showing in the frigid air.

Jack can feel the tears clawing at the back of his throat. He wraps his arms around Gabriel and finds him cold to the touch—hard and cold like a corpse left in an ice house till it can be buried.

“I have to go,” Gabriel says. The words clot in Gabriel’s throat with the thickness of a goodbye, or the kind of apology that ends marriages.

The drumbeat of denial rises to a cacophony. Jack shakes his head till he can feel a headache starting in his temples. “No. We’ll find a way. We can find a witch. A fire spirit. We can head south.”

“We can't go south.” If they could have gone south, they would have gone weeks ago. Gabriel kindly doesn’t remind Jack that it’s too late for any of those things anyway. Traveling through the winter countryside once he caught the cold would only have brought them to this point faster. 

Even more kindly, he doesn’t point out that there is no witch or fire spirit that can lift the Winter Queen’s cold in the first place.

Jack feels tears gathering on his lashes. Gabriel presses a hand to his cheek and they freeze into clumps. His touch is painful, and Jack doesn’t care. Lets Gabriel pull him close with a slow intensity that reminds Jack of their first time. Of all the times they’ve fallen into each other’s arms after the filth and fear of a battle to remember what’s worth living for.

When Gabriel kisses him, it’s deep and long, slow and passionate. It's a kiss goodbye. 

Jack doesn't care that it’s like kissing an icicle. He wraps his arms around Gabriel ferociously, holding him as tight as he can. He’d do anything to keep him there, to keep him _here_. The injustice of it is a roaring furnace in him, and he kisses Gabriel with a desperate desire to push it into him till it thaws him again.

But finally Gabriel pushes Jack gently, inexorably away, and stands, and walks out the door.

Jack grieves.

He lies in bed in their garret room for three days, wrapped up like a caterpillar in all the blankets that still smell like Gabriel. When he finally comes out, he doesn't have to explain to anyone. He comes to the pub alone, hollow-eyed from three days of not really sleeping, and the word goes round: Morrison’s husband is the latest to be taken by the cold.

He won’t be the last, but they’re kind enough not to point that out to him. He lost his husband and he deserves to mourn. 

The ones who drew away in Gabriel’s last days come back. They stop by Jack’s seat to give him soft words of condolence. A few sit and talk with him, offering him sympathy-laden distraction even though he’s not very good company. He ignores the knowing looks when people think he’s not watching, and the whispers that aren’t quite quiet enough about the inevitability of it all. Those would have him leaping to his feet in Gabriel's defense, if he could shoulder aside the grief enough to care. But as it is...what good can it do?

He finds himself gravitating to others in town who’ve also lost loved ones. They’re the ones who understand best. They don’t have to talk, which makes it easier. They can communicate without words, just by sharing the pain in their eyes.

But then there are the ones who’ve lost someone to the cold. A couple of them stop by to offer their sympathies, but Jack can’t bear to meet their eyes. There’s a shattered, awful shadow in them, and a knowing pity that makes his insides clutch horribly. Whatever they see waiting for him, he doesn’t want to know.

The Widow Gunnerson is one of them. She’d been outgoing and generous before, always had a kind word in hard times and a gift for the needy, but since she lost her boy, she’s been all but a ghost haunting her own community. She comes and sits with Jack, and they stare silently into their drinks together.

A few days after Jack’s bereavement, she stops showing up altogether. On the second day she doesn’t appear, Mayor Eleanor goes up the hill to the Gunnersons homestead to check on her. She comes back to solemnly inform everyone that she found the widow’s house standing open and empty, with the hearth gone to gray ash and the snow blowing into her kitchen. 

There are many unsurprised nods. The barkeeper serves a round on the house and they hold a toast to her name.

One week later, walking home from the pub with the flickering fire of the streetlights turning the ghostly evening snowfall into a glittering gold around him, Jack hears it for the first time.

“Jack. Jack, I'm here.”

It's faint but clear, in the way that distant sounds can travel through the crystal air of winter. Jack has the strangest feeling that it’s coming from the shadows under the snowy pines in the city park up ahead. 

He has to pass right by that dark hollow. It’s the hardest thing he’s ever done to steel his heart and refuse to look. He thanks the gods for small mercies that he’s on the other side of the street.

As he knew it would, it comes again when he’s even with the pines. “Jack.” 

Even braced for it, Gabriel’s soft call twists like a knife in the gut. He wants to vomit. He wants to sob. He squeezes his eyes shut against both. “It's just a figment,” he mutters to himself, over and over, just loud enough to cover up any further calls so he can pretend that he’s only hearing them in his memory.

He knows it’s not.

This is the horror of the bad cold. It doesn't kill. Those it takes, it transforms. They freeze right down to the heart, till they lose their humanity, their empathy, their ability to love. But they keep their memories. Most of all they remember those they loved: the warmth of loving and being loved in return. So, when the transformation is complete, the frozen ones often return to seek out those they left behind. 

Sleep doesn’t come to Jack that night. He lies awake in bed, replaying Gabriel calling to him and refusing to answer, over and over again. In the morning, he rises and goes to the pub again, as soon as it opens, desperate for noise and people to fill his head with.

A few nights later, it snows again and Gabriel calls to him all night through his dreams. “Jack. Jack, I’m still here. I’m cold. Open the window.”

When Jack wakes in the morning, there’s a handprint in the frost of his fifth floor window. The chill that runs down his back and raises the hairs on the nape of his neck has nothing to do with the cold.

He still doesn’t meet the eyes of the townspeople who’ve lost someone to the cold, but by god now he understands that look in their eyes. It’s worse than a haunting, to grieve his husband while hearing his voice, knowing all he has to do is reach out to him… 

Jack thinks about moving south in the spring and staying there. Gabriel might not be able to follow him into the warm climates. Jack can’t decide which is worse.

Life moves on with no regard for personal loss, and Jack still has to pay rent. There’s not much fighting to be done in winter, but in a farming community there are always odd jobs that need a strong body. It’s how Jack—and Gabriel, when...Gabriel—makes ends meet while he’s stranded here.

He’s in the back forty at the Harper farm, helping to lay new fence after a pack of wolves scared their herd into trampling the old one. When he returns to his pile of posts to fetch one, he finds Gabriel sitting on top of them.

“Hey.” Gabriel smiles at him. “You’ve been ignoring me.”

He looks fine. Almost fine. He’s dressed in a long hooded coat, and in the shadows of its hood, he shines with an eerie light that gives his skin a bluish cast. It’s in his eyes, too: the frostlight that finally finished replacing his living vitality. He’s one of the frozen people now.

His smile is hollow, and like the last time Jack saw him, his breath doesn’t fog in the air. Jack can’t tell for certain whether he’s breathing at all. 

Gabriel pushes to his feet with a little grunt and comes toward him. “You look good, Jack. I missed you.”

Jack flinches when Gabriel’s hand reaches to cup his face. The cold of it radiates against Jack’s skin from an inch away.

Gabriel pauses, the spark of frostlight dancing in his eyes. “Are you afraid of me, Jack?”

Jack swallows, unable to answer.

He isn’t afraid. He’s furious. He wants to crack open this uncanny spectre of his husband and free the real Gabriel from his icy shell. He wants to fight the cold, the Winter Queen. Punish her for doing this and force her to fix it. He wants to lean into that touch and fling himself into Gabriel’s arms to hold him till he melts, and it takes everything Jack has to remember that everyone who has tried that has died.

He meets Gabriel’s eyes and sees Gabriel recognize his anger. “I’m cold, Jackie,” he says. It’s somewhere between a confession and a plea. “I’m cold and hungry and I feel so lost without you. Please, Jack.”

Jack grits his teeth. He grew up in the north. He spent his whole childhood being warned about the frozen people, and he repeats them all desperately to himself. It’s a trick. It’s just an echo. A monster speaking through the cloak of Gabriel’s identity.

But then Gabriel moves, breaking his unnaturally still stance to withdraw, pulling his hand away from Jack’s face with a flicker of distant hurt in his eyes.

Jack reaches for him with a raw animal sound and pulls him close. 

If he’d thought Gabriel was cold the last time they touched, now it’s like embracing living frostbite. Everywhere they come into contact, he can feel Gabriel pulling the warmth from his body. But it’s nothing compared to his sudden terror at the thought of Gabriel leaving. Gabriel’s smile may be hollow but the pain in his face is real. Jack knows him. This is his Gabriel, however mutilated, and he’s hurting.

When Gabriel shifts to capture Jack’s mouth with his own, Jack meets him. Gabriel’s body softens as tension leaves him, making it feel less like Jack is hugging a man-sized icicle. Gabriel sighs and his breath is searing cold in Jack’s lungs, just like his touch where Gabriel’s hands slide up under his clothes to press against the warm skin of his belly. It feels like Gabriel is inside and surrounding him at the same time, and it makes Jack ache with memory and want as much as with the cold.

He lets himself be pushed back onto the stack of posts, and ignores the chill to cling tight around Gabriel’s body when he comes down on top of him. Gabriel’s achingly familiar body. His movements, his touch, his taste even though it’s edged with the sting of frost. 

“I missed you,” Jack whispers through a tight throat. He thinks he might be crying. It’s hard to tell through the spreading numbness on his cheeks.

“I missed you too,” Gabriel murmurs. He kisses Jack again and drinks the living heat from him. To have this man in his arms again, Jack would give anything.

Afterwards, Jack tugs his layers of clothes back into place and chafes at his arms. He can’t stop shivering. He feels like he’ll never be warm again.

Gabriel stands a few steps away and watches him. The light in his eyes has gone colder, sharper. Hungrier, Jack thinks. “Are you going to leave now?”

“No,” Gabriel answers. His voice is calm and collected. As if he hadn’t just feasted on his husband’s life. “Why would I ever want to leave you, Jack?”

 _”I have to go,”_ he’d said, in a voice that had cracked with apology and sorrow, leaving Jack to save his life while Jack’s heart had split apart. 

Through the shaking that continues to rack him, Jack feels his expression harden. “Gabe, would you do something for me?”

“Anything,” Gabriel says promptly. 

It’s an amoral ‘anything.’ There’s no care left in him to give him pause. If there were, he’d hesitate at the look on Jack’s face now. “Would you take me to the Winter Queen?” 

Jack let Gabriel go away and die alone to save his life. He’ll either find a way to save him or die taking revenge for him.

Gabriel tilts his head, that slow thoughtful sway of his chin that Jack always found so sexy he couldn’t bear not to kiss him when he did it. “I can do that. It’s a long way, though. When do you want to go?”

Jack stands up and catches his fingers in Gabriel’s sleeve. It might not be a good idea to hold onto him skin to skin for too long. “Right now.”

The Winter Queen’s palace can only be reached through the winter ways, which can only be walked by those who are made of winter. Gabriel leads Jack through dreamy vales of pine and fir turned into fairylands by deep blankets of snow, and mountain passes where the tossing winds turn the falling snow into swirls that seem to obliterate time and direction until Jack feels like he’s walking in an endless circle. 

Gabriel must be leading him far north. The nights feels days long, and the days flicker past so quickly Jack feels like he must be sleepwalking through them. They rest, sometimes. They hunt for food for Jack. They travel through through glacial caves lit a gemlike blue-green by the sunlight passing through the ice. It’s as if they’re walking along the bottom of a frozen ocean. There, Gabriel kisses Jack again, hungry and needy in a way that isn’t quite Gabriel but close enough that Jack’s body responds to him. Afterward, Jack feels numb in body and soul, so exhausted with cold that he has to stop and sleep to get his strength back. When he wakes, it’s still dark. Or maybe it’s dark again.

He’s lost all track of time by the time they emerge from the glacier caves into a boreal forest. He stops and looks around in wonder. The snow-covered spires of the firs are lit with the purple of twilight. Above, the aurora swims across the sky in sinuous curtains of light. It’s utterly silent.

It feels like a dreamscape: unreal, melting away under the weight of his regard. Suddenly he finds himself staggering, his balance gone as though he’d just been tossed into the air, and he grabs for the back of Gabriel’s coat to stay upright. 

Gabriel turns in muted surprise and catches him before he falls into the snow. “Are you alright?”

“Tired.” Jack leans on Gabriel and closes his eyes for a moment, dizzy, grounding himself in the relief of Gabriel’s solidity. “Hungry.” He finally stopped shaking from the last time Gabriel took his heat, but recovery was draining. The idea of a warm bed and a hot drink feels like a fantasy spun of the wind-sculpted snowbanks that surround them. He wonders if he’ll die before he ever gets warm again.

“Where are we?” he asks once he feels steady again. Gabriel’s frostlight glow is starkly visible in the deepening twilight. “How much further is it?” 

“Not much further now.” Gabriel reaches down to catch Jack’s hand in his. His touch burns a little. Less than it probably should. “I’m cold, Jack. And you’re so warm. You always have been.”

Jack lets him lace their fingers together but resists when Gabriel tries to bring his hand to his lips. “You know I’m doing this for you, right?”

“Yes.”

They start walking again. Jack listens to his feet crunch in the snow for a few steps. Gabriel’s make no noise. “But you don’t understand why, do you?”

“I…” For a second that makes Jack’s heart swoop with hope, Gabriel’s eerily smooth expression knits with confusion. “I know you’re trying to help. But you won’t be able to, Jack. You won’t be able to change anything.”

Jack nods slowly and fights down disappointment. “Then you don’t understand. It’s alright. You would’ve done the same for me.”

“I know I would have.” There’s a blankness in Gabriel’s eyes as he says it, like he’s trying to search for the explanation but he can’t find it. 

Jack lifts Gabriel’s ice block hand and kisses his knuckles. A little curl of his own warmth seeps away at the contact, and Gabriel’s expression brightens with pleasure. Jack smiles a little at the sight. “It doesn’t matter if I can help or not. I won’t stop trying. How much further do we have to go?”

“Not much further,” Gabriel says again. He points, in a direction that means nothing to Jack. “There’s a ferryman we’ll have to meet, who’ll carry us across the ice lake that surrounds the Winter Queen’s palace. But you’ll need to watch out for him. He isn’t...safe.”

Jack looks ruefully down at their joined hands, where the warmth still flows from him into his husband. The cold that seeps into him in return burns like fire till it reaches the point of numbness. It’s almost a relief now, when it hits that point. It numbs the hope and fear along with the bone-deep ache of Gabriel’s touch. “Is he like you?”

Gabriel snorts. “Not like me. I wouldn’t hurt you.”

They walk together for a short distance in silence. Then Gabriel glances at Jack’s face. “You’re crying again. Are you alright?”

Jack swallows and clears his throat. “Just take us to the ferryman.”

The ferryman’s place is the single feature in an otherwise unbroken landscape of white. They’ve left the forest and mountains behind. All that’s left is endless rolling snowfields that seem to stretch on forever till they merge with a sky of the same color. They’re in the very brief day, now, and the hazy light turns everything a relentless grayish white.

In the midst of it all, a gray-brown wood dinghy with a single mast juts upward by a pier that’s covered with snow but defined by straight lines that stand out from the rounded drifts almost as starkly as the boat.

Jack doesn’t notice the little shack till they get close. It looks like a snowbank with smoke drifting out the top. The walls are dark, but so piled and surrounded with snow that they only peek out here and there. 

He notices something else too. “The ice lake is...frozen.”

Gabriel nods.

Jack nods grimly. “Of course it is.” And the boat is frozen into the ice, also because of course it is. He opens his mouth again to ask how they’re supposed to get any further than this when the door to the shack shoves open and the ferryman emerges.

At first, he seems to be a withered little old man. But once he clears the eaves, he unfolds. And unfolds some more, till Jack is looking up at a strange spindly creature several feet taller than he is, that seems almost to be made out of sticks. Its limbs are freakishly out of proportion, with scarecrow legs that make up the better part of its height, and multi-jointed arms that reach almost down to the ground, with great twiggy-fingered hands the size of sunflowers.

Its head swings from one to the other of them, giving Jack a long, contemplative look with its strange red eyes before turning to Gabriel. “Yew want te go te the queen’s palace?”

“Yes.” Gabriel takes a step sideways to stand closer to Jack.

The creature notes the move. Then its head turns away, looking up over the lake. “Can’t go tewnight. A storm is coming. Yew’ll have te stay.”

It swings a long arm in an almost courtly sweep toward its door and then heads back inside, folding back up as it goes till it can shuffle back through the low door. 

Jack frowns at its back, ready to argue. Maybe it’s because of Gabriel’s warning before, but he has a bad feeling. There are no sign of a storm, at least that he can recognize.

Gabriel glances at him, sighs and takes Jack’s elbow. “Come on. There’s nothing we can do about it.” He doesn’t sound much happier than Jack feels. When he glances over, Gabriel’s brow is lowered into a wary scowl. That and the familiar tension in his hand sing Jack a song he knows well: Gabriel doesn’t trust this creature, especially not with Jack.

The inside of the shack is a little roomier than it looks on the outside, but not by much. The room is dim. There are no windows, and only a low fire in the hearth. There’s a cot along the wall opposite it, with a kettle hanging on a hook over the fire. A table with a single chair occupies the wall across from the door. The floor is made of planks that are covered with a fine layer of dust and dirt, and the walls and ceiling are covered with racks and shelves arrayed with an assortment of things that are as dusty and cobwebbed as they are poorly organized. Clearly the ferryman isn’t much for keeping house.

Jack’s heart leaps and then sinks again when he discovers the fire gives off strangely little heat. The room is warmer than the outside air, but it’s still chilly. 

The space between the ferryman’s cot and the hearth is not large, but it’s mostly empty. A bear pelt covers the floor before the fire. It doesn’t look unpleasant to sleep on, even if it could use airing out. The ferryman pulls a coarse-spun blanket off his bed and passes it to Jack with a crooked, leering smile on his face that Jack has to brace himself not to recoil from. Its fingers scratch slowly along Jack’s arm as it withdraws.

“The proud place for sleeping, yours, before the fire.”

Jack looks away from that sly smile to share a glance with Gabriel. Gabriel shrugs and also gestures to the rug. 

Jack takes his time getting situated. The fur rug is soft underneath him, and if it isn’t exactly warm it isn’t cold either, which is such a relief after their journey so far that it makes him ache. The blanket isn’t thick, but it’s something, and the fire doesn’t blaze with heat but it radiates at least some warmth. He lies down crosswise to it, to catch as much of its warmth with his body as he can. 

As he gets settled, he catches sight of the ferryman watching from his cot. Something about the way he seems to linger on Jack’s every movement makes Jack’s hackles go up so fiercely he wants to reach for his sword.

He thinks about calling this off. About storming out and finding some other way across the lake. Maybe they could even walk, if it’s as frozen over as it looks. He has a feeling the ferryman would try to stop him from leaving, and the idea of fighting the disturbing creature is almost appealing.

But then Gabriel sits down at his back, so that he’s between Jack and the ferryman. “Rest as long as you can,” he says. “I’ll be right here.”

They’ve said those words to each other many times before, full of affection and protective determination. None of that is there now, and Jack stares at the fire for a long time, lost in the lonely feeling that Gabriel is terribly far away from him.

But he’s still Gabriel, and he’s as implacable a guard as ever. With him sitting watch, Jack finally manages to fall into a restless sleep that’s better than nothing. He wakes many times during the night. Each time, he feels the ferryman’s eyes on his back in the gloom, and Gabriel still sitting sentry between them.

Early in the morning—at least it feels like it, though there’s no real way to tell—Jack wakes and feels his bladder twinging. The room is almost entirely dark, with only a flickering reddish glow from the fire’s coals. When he tosses the blanket aside and sits up, Gabriel gives him a wordless murmur. 

“Piss,” Jack whispers back to him. He can’t tell if the ferryman is asleep or not. He works his way outside as quietly as he can manage and trudges around to the side of the shack away from the pier to piss into the snowbank.

It’s dark outside, and the aurora is only a faint smudge of green, but the stars stretch away overhead in a river of light that flows all the way to the horizon. Where they sink down below the curve of the earth, Jack thinks he can spot a bluish glow against the sky. He squints and tips his head to look out the corner of his eye, trying to make out whether it’s a figment of his imagination.

There’s not a single sign of a cloud. “‘Storm is coming,’ my ass,” Jack mutters. He knew the ferryman was lying.

Then he switches his attention to the snowbank next to him with a frown. He zips up and moves over to lean down over it. It isn’t smooth like all the others. It looks disrupted. Dug into. 

He pokes into it, bored, half-asleep, curious. He finds a human hand.

He manages to stifle a shout of surprise. The hand is a man’s, he thinks. It’s long-boned and elegant, but the ring it wears is a man’s. It’s attached to an arm, and the arm, he can tell, is still attached to a body, buried under the snow. 

He breathes in, the cold dry air making the insides of his nostrils stick together. He breathes out again. It’s far from the first time he’s seen a frozen dead man. The more important part is that their host must have put the corpse here. 

He stares at it for a few minutes, warring with himself. Part of him wants to dig the rest of the body up so he can see for certain what happened. But if the ferryman notices Jack’s dug up the body of a man most likely murdered and buried, it’d probably be a good way to start a fight. Frankly, Jack would prefer it. The ferryman creeps him out. He obviously wants something from Jack, and whatever it is, Jack is fairly sure he’s not interested in giving it. But Gabriel seems to think they still need him. 

He sighs and starts putting the snow back over the body, doing the best he can to make it look like it did before.

Who knows how these things work anyway? Maybe this is what happens when a passenger skimps on their fee. Maybe he was already dying and the ferryman had nowhere else to put him. Maybe the weird creature eats people and this is his larder. He remembers the way those red eyes had tracked up and down his body, and suspects not, but he can ask Gabriel later.

Finished, he brushes himself clean as best he can and heads back around toward the door. He won’t get another wink of sleep tonight, but a lukewarm hovel is better than a windy tundra plain. 

He’s reaching for the doorknob when a sudden crash and scuffle comes from inside and the door slams open into the drift behind it. 

Jack goes staggering back, fighting not to fall on his ass. The ferryman comes banging out and storms toward him, unfolding to its full looming height as Jack draws his sword, still backing up.

With a roar, Gabriel charges straight out of the shack into the creature’s back. Jack dives to the side as they both topple into the snow, clawing and snarling.

Jack clambers out of his own hole in the snow to watch them roll around fighting, biting and kicking at each other. He’s more than a little tempted to just chop the ferryman’s head off, but they’re thrashing so much he can’t get a clear shot.

“Hey!” he snaps instead. “What the hell is going on?”

They both pause, and notice him standing over them with his sword ready.

Gabriel shoves the ferryman deeper into the snow and then rolls off, while the creature folds in on himself back to his smaller size. There’s something conciliatory about the motions.

Gabriel climbs back to his feet to stand next to Jack. He doesn’t bother brushing himself off, and the snow doesn’t melt on him. All the rage he’d been displaying a moment ago falls away from him as if it’d been a mask, but his frostlight is glowing a bright, frigid blue that reminds Jack of the sunlight through the walls of the ice caves.

“He was worried,” he says in a tone so empty Jack can’t be sure if he’s being emotionless or sarcastic. “You’d been gone for a while.”

Jack purses his lips and looks the ferryman over as he climbs back to his feet. He doesn’t brush himself off either. He watches Jack with hostile, hungry red eyes that seem to dig into him. Waiting for Jack to reveal that he knows the thing’s secret, probably.

He lets his mouth curl with disgust as he decides he won’t give the creature the satisfaction. Instead, he straightens up and sheathes his sword. “I’m just peachy. I just got caught up looking at the sky.” He points off to the far end of the Milky Way, where it descends below the horizon. “Is there something over there?”

They both turn to follow his gesture. “That’s the Winter Queen’s palace,” Gabriel says. “Once we cross the lake, we’ll be there.”

Jack catches the ferryman’s eyes and waves at the boat, still frozen into the lake. “You have a way to get us there?” 

It waves at the boat too. “Blind, you? Come. Now is the time to go. The sky river is the path we follow.”

Tired of this nonsense, Jack shoots an angry, narrow-eyed look at Gabriel.

Gabriel reads his expression as easily as ever. “The boat works, Jack. Come on, let’s go now. Unless you’d rather wait around here longer.”

Jack follows them toward the boat, frustrated but too used to following Gabriel’s lead at this point to bother questioning. He looks back toward the far side of the shack once. When he looks back, the ferryman’s eyes are on him again, with the mad-eyed fixation of a hunting bird. Jack has a feeling that if Gabriel weren’t here, he would be fighting for his life.

But the ferryman seems reluctant to cross Gabriel. Considering what Jack knows about his husband’s fighting ability, that’s wise.

The boat is frozen into the ice, just as Jack thought, but neither Gabriel nor the ferryman seem to pay it any mind. Gabriel just waves Jack over and holds out a hand to help him into the boat.

When the ferryman gets in, he sits at the tiller with his legs tucked in, knees sticking up at awkward angles, and reaches over the side with his long spidery arms. Jack stares as he begins to simply push the boat forward.

They sail through the ice as if it were water, even though it’s solid enough for the ferryman to lay hands on. It’s slow going at first, but once they get underway, the ferryman positions the sail to catch the wind and they pick up speed.

It’s a long, slow journey through a star-capped blue shadow world. The dark ice lake with its blanket of snow sprawls away in every direction. But the Milky Way turns out to be a more complicated path than Jack expected. It twists and turns in ways he’s absolutely sure it never has in anyplace he viewed it before. Sometimes as they follow it, it curves abruptly to one side and the ferryman has to work the sail to follow its course.

When the aurora begins to streak the sky again, Gabriel says, “Almost there.”

Not long after that, the ferryman pulls the boat to a halt. “Here.”

He simply extends his legs out of either side of the boat and stands up. When he offers a long-fingered hand to Jack, Jack braces himself as invisibly as he can and lets himself be helped out of the boat.

The spidery fingers wrap closed around his forearm, but before Jack has to figure out what to do about it, Gabriel clears his throat. The ferryman straightens and makes a gesture in his direction. “Payment now.”

Gabriel nods and digs into his pocket. Jack can’t manage to get a good look at what he hands over, but the ferryman seems satisfied. It’s a relief to watch him climb back into his boat and go.

When Jack is sure he’s out of hearing range, he says, “He had a dead man buried in a snow drift by his house.”

 

“Yeah,” Gabriel says. “Sometimes he does that. He likes the pretty ones.”

The hair on Jack’s arms prickles. “For _what?_ ”

Gabriel’s brows come together. “I’m not sure. Someone at the Winter Queen’s place might be able to tell you, if you really want to know.”

Jack shudders. “I really don’t.”

The Winter Queen’s palace is easy enough to find, now that they’ve come this far. The rays of the aurora all radiate from a single point like a blazing green and pink star. They simply head toward it. When they get close, Jack can see that point is the tip of the spire on her tallest tower. The palace seems hewn from the mountainside, half stone and half glacial ice, carved and sculpted into a fantasy of delicate carvings. 

The guards at the gate are huge. Jack mistakes them for strange roughly shaped statues at first, until one turns its tusked head to look at them. A troll. He pauses to meet its glittering black eyes, studying it curiously, while Gabriel continues up to the less ludicrously enormous white-furred creature that stands in between them, right before the gate.

“I was sent to escort you,” it says, in a deep, beautifully resonant voice that captures Jack’s attention. Then it lifts one huge paw to push its wire-frame spectacles back up its blunt nose.

Once Gabriel and Jack have fallen in, the yeti waves to one of the trolls, which reaches up with its long arms to begin turning the portcullis crank.

The interior of the palace is a wonder. It’s lit with hanging lanterns that shine with frostlight. The facets of the walls catch and reflect it, along with the haunting lights of the aurora, until the whole place sparkles with fairylights. The yeti leads them through courtyards walled with the spindle shapes of snow-laden firs, and rooms made of spruce trees, their graceful limbs coming together overhead into living vaults. They pass through halls whose entire walls are built of perfectly transparent ice, where Jack can see the pink and green-lit landscape stretching away into the distance.

The castle is populated by all manner of fantastic creatures. They pass by a concert in one of the courtyards that’s populated with elegant winter sprites and ice maidens, dancing to the music in slow spiraling waltzes. A cloud of tiny glistening snowflake fairies holds an argument with a frost giant in a hallway, and another courtyard hosts a squad of ambulant skeletons that seem held together and powered by the ice clumping at their joints, who seem to be practicing some sort of maneuvers. And there are many more like Gabriel, frozen people who seem almost perfectly human but with a glow about them and hungry frostlight burning in their eyes. Some of them nod or wave to him, and he does the same back.

Jack doesn’t belong here. This place is beautiful, orderly, a home to this community of strange creatures that sing and dance and quarrel and know each other. He feels sloppy with body heat and emotion, an interloper from another world.

But Gabriel isn’t. He slides into place like an oiled sword to its sheath. The changes in him Jack had found frightening, stiff and inhuman suit him here, surrounded by this ethereal spun-glass world, and he falls into step in it easily, moving with a relaxed air, as if he’s come home.

Many of the creatures wear the queen’s livery. At one junction, the yeti stops to make way for a beautiful, statuesque woman with blue skin and a cold expression, who strides by in a handsome, cleanly cut uniform with a cloak the color of the midnight sky.

“Captain,” he greets her. She and Gabriel exchange a short short nod as she passes. The click of her heels echoes along the corridor after them for a long distance.

Striding through the halls with a warrior’s easy gait and his head held high, it’s easy to imagine Gabriel in one of those uniforms. Stern and aloof, with that shivering hunger in his eyes and the cold blue glow beneath his skin.

Jack sidles closer to loop his arm through Gabriel’s, ignoring the frostbite burn of it and the draw of his own dwindling heat from his skin. When Gabriel glances at him, startled, Jack meets his eyes evenly. Gabriel is his. He won’t let the queen have him.

When they reach the Winter Queen, she isn’t at all what he’d imagined. She isn’t a tall, intimidating figure of power, or an inhumanly beautiful siren. She’s a pretty petite, round-faced woman; a girlish figure, seemingly defenseless in a throne perfectly sized for her atop a dais dressed in deep blue and silver. Her smile when they enter is sweet. She nods to the yeti when he stops before her. “Thank you, Winston. You may leave us.”

The yeti bows with surprising slow grace and makes his way out, closing the doors behind him. She sits quietly until he’s gone, and then she holds out a hand to Gabriel.

He moves up the stairs to kneel before her and bow over it. When he releases it, she touches him with light affection on the crown of his head. “Hello, Gabriel. You and your friend have come a long way to see me, haven’t you?”

Gabriel nods. She waves him up and he stands. “This is my husband, Jack. He wants to save me.”

“Save you?” She lifts a hand to tap sparkling fingernails against her lip and shoots a thoughtful glance at Jack. “But what do you want, Gabriel? Do you like being one of mine?”

Gabriel bows his head, and doesn’t speak immediately. Jack can’t help but fidget. He can’t see Gabriel’s expression. He wants to know what he’s thinking. “I’m always cold,” Gabriel says slowly, after a bit. “No matter how much warmth I touch, it’s never enough. I always need more.” He turns sideways to look back at Jack. “Nothing hurts, though, the way it did when I was warm. None of my old wounds ache anymore. I’m not afraid of losing anyone. I think I like it.”

The words hurt almost more than Jack can bear.

He’s so tired. He’s traveled so far. His legs shake with exhaustion as well as cold, and he's so used to the dizziness of exposure and deprivation he barely notices anymore the way the world swims whenever he turns his head. He didn’t know what he would do when he got here, and he didn’t find any answers along the way. 

Part of him wants to fight the Winter Queen. Wants to punish her for making Gabriel say such a thing. For taking him away, to somewhere Jack can’t follow.

He would die doing it. He can see it in his head: he would charge up the steps, sword out, and Gabriel, hers now, would intervene. The guards would be on him in seconds, and cut him down even as he lashed out at them in hopeless rage. The last thing he would see would be Gabriel, watching with that same blank expression, heart frozen too solid to feel anything.

For a moment, Jack wonders if it would be for the best for them both.

“Is that why you did this to him?” he asks, feeling heavy in his bones. “Because you think it's merciful?”

The queen turns her attention to him. There’s a compassion in her eyes; a steadiness that makes Jack feel like she knows what he’s thinking. “You truly love him, don’t you?” she asks. “You followed him all this way, even though you don’t really understand anything.”

He gives a brief thought to getting angry, but he doesn’t have the energy for it anymore. Instead, he snorts. “If that’s what you think, then I understand more than you do.”

He hefts a sigh and totters up the stairs. His legs are stiff. His knees ache. He feels old. Gabriel subtly shifts in between Jack and the queen anyway. He may be missing his emotions, but he knows Jack well. Jack never needed emotions anymore than Gabriel does, in order to do what he found necessary.

Jack stops on the top step and looks at him thoughtfully. He sees again the vision of Gabriel watching his blood spread across the floor, alone and unable to care. “You can tell me he’s better off like this all you like,” he says. “But I know Gabriel. He’s alone.”

He reaches out. “That’s why you came to find me, isn’t it, Gabe? Maybe you can’t feel anything about it, but you were alone and you didn’t want to be.” 

Gabriel takes his hand. A few precious slips of human warmth pass from Jack’s fingers to his husband’s. He wonders how many he has left to give.

The queen watches it go. “And so you came here to try to save him,” she says sadly. “But what you didn’t know was that there is nothing you can do.”

“I don’t believe that,” Jack says roughly. 

Gabriel tightens his grip. “I did warn you, Jack.”

“I’m sorry,” the queen says softly. “I know you’ve traveled a long way and paid a high price to try to find a way. But it’s true. I can’t make him human again. And if I unfroze his heart, it would only condemn him to the loneliness and guilt of what he is now.” She spreads her hands. “Even if you killed me, it wouldn’t change anything. There’s nothing I can do.”

He doesn’t want to believe it. It sinks in bit by bit, driven home by her transparent sincerity. 

He’s staved off grief for so long. He doesn’t welcome it back, but it comes anyway. His eyes well and his chest aches. He looks down where Gabriel is holding his hand.

“Then I’ll stay.” The words scrape painfully in his tight throat. It doesn’t matter. It’s all he has left to say.

“You'll die if you stay here, Jack.” Somehow, Gabriel’s voice is surprising. Jack looks up. Those familiar, beloved but terribly changed eyes are fixed on him. But there’s no sorrow in them. He’s only pointing out the facts.

“You came to get me,” Jack whispers. “You fought the ferryman for me. You wanted me here. So I’m staying. If that’s all I can do, then I’ll stay. I won’t leave you alone.”

They all fall silent. There’s nothing else to say.

“Well, then,” the queen says after a moment. “I’ll have a guest room arranged for you. You’re welcome to stay for… Well. You’re welcome to stay.”

With that, the audience is over. Gabriel, who seems to know where to go, leads Jack by the hand down the stairs.

At the base of the stairs, Jack discovers he isn’t quite resigned. He pulls Gabriel to a halt for a moment to look back. “If you’re so sorry, then why do you send the cold?” He casts each word at her feet like a hard little stone, less a question and more a trophy to her hypocrisy.

Instead of accepting it, her face grows stern. “I send the cold because your people break your treaties.” It doesn’t suit her nearly as well as the kindness. “It’s too late for Gabriel, but if you want to save others, you might travel back and tell them they owe me a tithe.”

Jack frowns. “But we sent a tithe.” On the last day of the harvest festival, the whole city had turned out to watch him go, escorted by a parade--a young man of appropriate age and health, designated to sacrifice a year and a day in service to the Winter Queen to honor their ancient treaties to share her lands. Jack looks back at Gabriel. “Gabe, you were with me. You saw.”

Gabriel nods. “I did.”

The queen shakes her head with a little frown. “Well. That’s as may be, but he didn’t arrive.”

It reminds Jack of something. He looks at Gabriel again. “Does the tithe come here the same way we did?”

“Yes,” Gabriel says.

“He has to cross the frozen lake?”

“Yes,” Gabriel says again. “I told you it’s the only way here.”

Jack licks his lips. “Has the ferryman ever killed a tithe before?”

The queen makes a little growl. “Oh, him. One of these days he’s going to push me too far.” She taps her nails hard on the arm of her throne. They make a fine silvery chiming noise that echoes off the walls and dies away. “Fine, so that’s what happened to the last one. But I still don’t have a tithe, and without a tithe, the contract between your people and me doesn’t stand.”

Jack hefts a sigh and rubs his forehead. Thinks of traveling all the way back to warn the city of what had happened. But he has to, or more people will end up like Gabriel.

Then he lifts his head. “Wait. What if I agree to be the tithe?”

She raises her eyebrows. “Being a tithe isn’t easy. You’ve already been through a great deal.”

Everyone knows. The tithes from years past tell stories about their service: about how they spend a year never knowing warmth, in a land where the sun doesn’t rise for months at a time, their life force chained to the treaty to serve as the anchor that keeps the boundaries between the human and winter realms stable.

He’d already made up his mind to stay. And this will spare someone else for a year. “I’ll do it.”

Her face softens. “You’re a good man, aren’t you? Alright then. Winston will make the arrangements. When the ceremony is completed, the cold on the human cities will lift.”

Jack draws in a deep breath, trying to settle in his mind and heart what he’s agreed to. Then he bows, the way he remembers the yeti doing, or as close as he can manage.

Before he can turn to leave, she holds up a hand to forestall him. “Once the ceremony is complete,” she warns him, “you’ll be bound to my service for a year and a day. No matter how cold you get, no matter how hard it is to endure the conditions here, they won’t kill you. Do you understand?”

Jack nods shortly. But when her eyes flicker past him to Gabriel, he straightens with realization.

“You’re a good man,” the Winter Queen repeats with a smile. She stands up, and starts down the stairs toward them, silver gown sweeping around her. “To do this for your people. To come so far and give so much for the man you love. And since you’ve made so many sacrifices, maybe there’s something I can do for you after all.”

She’s graceful but tiny, almost cute. She only comes up to his chin, and her big, dark eyes sparkle up at him like she’s waiting for him to catch the punchline of a joke. 

“What is it?” he asks, confused. 

She reaches up to poke his nose. Her touch tickles like a melting snowflake, and she laughs when he wrinkles his nose. “He’s cute,” she says around him to Gabriel, “but a bit slow.”

Gabriel shrugs. “I always thought it was part of his charm.”

“Hey!” For a second, all that’s happened slips away and Jack turns to him in mock affront. 

Gabriel gazes placidly back at him. “If the cold won’t kill you, then I won’t kill you,” he says patiently. “I won’t hurt you. And you won’t hurt me.”

He whips back around to her and sees the truth of it in her face. “Well?” she asks with a tilt of her head that takes them both in. “Would you like me to give Gabriel’s heart back?”

“Yes.” Jack says it like a one-word prayer.

She smiles prettily at Jack, her eyes sparkling. “Fortunately, you brought it with you. You’ll have to hold still. You might not like this.” She steps closer, reaches a hand out...and plunges it into his chest.

He screams. It’s _so cold._ It’s like the soul is being burned out of him. This has to be what dying feels like.

She rummages around, sticking her tongue out the side of her mouth as she leans in deeper. “It’s got to be...ah. There!” Jack feels her hand close around something, icy and firm, and then she pulls it out. He breathes out with it, an exhalation of pain, emptiness. There’s a hole in him where something was…

And she’s holding it up: a swirling, glowing blue and red sphere. She smiles again in triumph. “Here it is, Gabriel’s heart.” She turns to him. “Are you sure you want it back, though? All those feelings and things will come with it.”

Gabriel looks down his nose at it and thinks. For an awful moment, Jack’s heart plummets, terrified that Gabriel will say no.

Gabriel looks up to meet his eyes. “Yes. I want to remember why he looks at me like that.”

Without another word, she plunges the sphere into Gabriel’s chest. He arches the same way Jack did, but he doesn’t scream. Just gasps a little as cold bluish flames erupt around him and then settle again in a puff of chilly fog.

He blinks his eyes clear of it and looks at Jack again. Tears spring to Jack’s eyes. It’s Gabriel. All of him, there in his eyes.

“Ja-” he says, but Jack is already flinging himself into Gabriel’s cold arms. Gabriel laughs and hugs him. “Oh god, Jackie. How could I have forgotten you?”

His touch still sucks the warmth from Jack’s bones, but Jack barely notices it compared to the joy of having Gabriel back.

Service to the Winter Queen is hard. He’d thought his journey with Gabriel had prepared him, days and days of feeling the cold till it had seemed to engrave itself into his bones. But this is something else again. A year of endless cold, till he’s forgotten it isn’t a part of him and he’s lost the trick of separating himself from it. Many times, he thinks he must be becoming like Gabriel. But the transformation never happens.

And Gabriel is there. After coming so close to losing him, Jack couldn’t care less that he’s still cold, that his touch still drains the warmth from Jack. Everything does that, here. What’s the difference between being cold to his soul, or just that little bit colder?

“It’s the queen’s protection,” Gabriel tells him, arms wrapped around Jack while they stand on a parapet and watch first sunrise of the spring. Its light barely creeps above the horizon, but for a few blessed moments everything lightens and Jack isn’t standing in perpetual twilight. He closes his eyes and basks in the sliver of...not warmth, but something that draw warmth from him.

“She couldn’t do anything for you,” Jack says, and wonders if she was lying.

Gabriel presses a frozen kiss to his neck. “She couldn’t make me human again. But she can keep the cold from taking you. Aren’t you the one who told me that traditionally the tithe is supposed to survive their service?”

Unless they get killed by a ferryman, apparently. The queen punished the creature, or at least so she told Jack. And she retrieved the tithe’s body. She’d sent Jack back with it through the winter ways, which he can travel himself now in her service even though Gabriel came along anyway, and he had delivered the body to the city, with a message from her offering her apologies.

It had been strange, to see a city of humans again after his time in the winter realm. It had been warmer, which was nice, but it had seemed so busy and ephemeral. Loud and bright, in a way he’d missed but also found almost overpowering after the quiet, refined stillness of the Winter Queen’s palace. He’d felt like an outsider, a frozen withdrawn slab of a man unable to do much more than watch life happen around him.

No wonder Gabriel prefers it here.

Gabriel sighs and nuzzles in closer. “You’re so warm. You taste like summer air and green things and the salt wind off the ocean.” Jack feels him shiver. Feels two cold fingers trace the pulse in his throat. “Jack, can I…?”

For answer, Jack twists around to kiss him. Gabriel’s frozen breath crawls down into his lungs, to match the touch of his hands slipping under Jack’s clothes to stroke up his back. Jack sighs with pleasure at being filled from within and without. Gabriel’s kisses are soft and sweet as shaved ice on Jack’s tongue. They sway and dance together among the swirling snowflakes, joined together by the flow of their cold and warmth, and when Jack burrows against him, Gabriel tickles playfully at him with chilly fingers.

When Jack tickles him back, Gabriel laughs and scoops him up to toss him into a snowbank. It squishes under his back like a soft pillow crumpling beneath him, and then Gabriel comes down on top of him. When it surrounds him like this, he can almost fool himself into believing the cold is warm. 

Jack can’t thaw out, but he can’t get frostbite either. When Gabriel undoes his coat and shirt to reach his skin and seal his freezing mouth around a nipple, Jack cries out with shock and arches into it, one hand wrapping around the back of Gabriel’s neck to keep him there, licking. Gabriel’s hands stay busy, opening Jack’s pants and working them off. Jack lifts his hips, suddenly as hungry for Gabriel as Gabriel is for Jack and his warmth. The snow is a different quality of cold beneath him than the air, or Gabriel, but one is no more painful than the next. 

There’s one kind of warmth Jack can still feel, and he feels it whenever he’s with Gabriel, when his love and joy and gratitude for this man he loves kindle inside him, so bright and warm that he can feel it glowing through his skin. Gabriel makes a moan that’s almost a sob at the radiance of it, and Jack wraps his legs around Gabriel’s waist to pull him close and let him drink deep. It’s half his, after all. 

Even in the winter realm, where the eternal cold and dark can make time seem to stand still, a year and a day eventually passes. 

On the last day of Jack’s service, they stand together on the parapet again. There’s no sun to watch set. The last of its light faded from the horizon a month ago and won’t come again for another month. But the aurora spirals across the sky, its eerie beauty lighting the fields of snow and the castle beneath them. Gabriel’s arms are around his waist, chin hooked over Jack’s shoulder. Jack long ago ceased wondering if he’d ever be warm again. It hardly matters when he’s forgotten what it even feels like. His skin is chafed and raw from his tasks and the ever-present cold. He’s tired. He feels worn to a nub. He clutches at Gabriel’s arms like a lifeline. “I don’t want to leave you.”

Gabriel nuzzles in closer against his neck.

Winston’s distinctive throat-clearing sounds from behind them. “The queen wishes an audience with you before you leave, Jack.”

Gabriel’s arms fall away and Jack turns.

The yeti motions to Gabriel. “You too, Gabriel. Let’s not keep her waiting.”

They follow Winston down to the throne room. Jack and Gabriel both kneel at the base of the dias. Winston performs his bow, so familiar now, and leaves, closing the doors behind him.

“You’ve finished your service,” the queen says. “Are you ready to go home?”

Jack swallows, eyes fixed on the floor. “When do I leave?”

“As soon as this year’s tithe arrives.” After a year here, Jack still doesn’t understand how time works in this realm. He and Gabriel arrived months after last year’s tithe should have come, but it seems the magic of the winter realm doesn’t bow to petty things like calendars.

Jack glances over at Gabriel. He can follow Jack back to the city, for as long as winter lasts, but they won’t be able to stay together. They won’t be able to be together, to touch and hold and kiss and make love, without Gabriel’s nature sucking the life from Jack. He gets hungry. He won’t be able to stay without becoming a danger.

Gabriel meets his eyes, the same misery showing on his frostlit face.

“Or,” the queen’s gentle voice continues after a moment, “you could stay in my service.”

Jack looks up at her, startled.

“Not as a tithe,” she clarifies. “As one of my vassals.”

He can feel the hope swelling in his chest, that spark that’s as close to true warmth as he’s known in a year.

“No,” Gabriel says angrily.

They both look at him.

Gabriel gestures to Jack. “Look at him! He can’t stay here. This place is killing him.” Jack starts shaking his head but Gabriel cuts in over him. “It’s destroying you, Jack. I can see it whittling away at you a sliver at a time. The tithe might protect you from the environment but it can’t protect your soul. If you stay, you’ll do worse than die. I refuse to watch that happen to you. I refuse to be the reason.”

Jack scowls and braces for an argument. The queen cuts him off with a lifted hand, and stands. 

They watch her come toward them. She drifts down the steps till she’s standing before them. She runs one hand over the sculpted curve of Gabriel’s cheek. The other, she runs through Jack’s hair. Then she puts a finger under his chin to tilt his face up and meet her eyes. “To be my vassal is different than being a tithe. A tithe survives the cold here because they have to return alive. But to be mine is to be a part of winter.” She smiles that sweet smile down at him. “One who is a part of winter isn’t bothered by cold. He is of a piece with it. Do you see?”

Next to him, Gabriel gasps, a soft intake of breath. Jack frowns. He’s afraid of being wrong. “I could...stay? Without feeling like this?” He holds up a hand, chapped and bluish-tinted beneath the nail.

“The cold wouldn’t bother you,” she says serenely. “Gabriel wouldn’t hurt you. You could stay.” She cups her hand under his jaw fondly. “You were a good tithe, Jack. And you’ve been good to Gabriel. I don’t always think much of humans. They often have no thought for the ways of the world or nature’s cycles, or the fragility of hearts, for that matter. But you’ve been diligent and devoted. I would be honored to have you in my service, and you both deserve a reward.”

“Yes,” Jack says without hesitating. “I’ll do it.”

Even in the winter realm—perhaps especially in the winter realm—oaths are a sacred thing. There is a formal ceremony to mark the occasion of Jack’s fealty. There is a vigil, in which Jack lays to rest his old life; the oathtaking, to which all the queen’s retainers bear witness; and a fast-breaking, in the form of a feast in the delicate and rarified style of the winter realm. Jack is offered ice wine, honeycomb from a snow bee hive, and a dish of perfectly pearl-round frozen tears of gratitude.

After everything, Gabriel comes and finds him where he’s standing on the terrace of the ice garden, ruminating on his new life. Jack is so lost in his thoughts that he doesn’t notice until Gabriel lays a hand on his shoulder. 

Startled, Jack turns to look at him, dashing in his white and silver uniform and cloak of midnight blue. Gabriel shifts his hand to cup Jack’s cheek.

“Well?” Gabriel asks. “How does it feel?”

He’s cold, still, but it’s all in the quality of it. It’s pleasant, welcoming. It reminds Jack of winters growing up on the farm, of snowball fights and sledding expeditions and the anticipation of dry clothes and a hearthfire after. It’s as warming to the soul as it is chilly on the skin.

Gabriel grins at the look on Jack’s face. It only widens when Jack puts a hand on Gabriel’s cheek in return, his beard scratching against Jack’s knuckles. 

“Not sure,” Jack mutters, fighting to keep a straight face. “Think I need a better test.”

When they kiss, Gabriel’s breath is the chill of snow brushed off a lover’s coat. Gabriel pulls Jack close by handfuls of his matching blue cloak and they entirely ignore the gentle drift of the snowfall in favor of each other.


End file.
